On your tractor, if you can

THE Anglican Bishop of Bor, Nathaniel Garang, sits under the little shade afforded by a thorn tree. His dusty compound has a few mud and straw huts, some plastic chairs, and goats reaching up to bare branches on their hind legs. The bishop is around 70, he guesses, and in reflective mood. He wears a small brass cross given to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Entering Canterbury cathedral, he remarks, was a special moment in his life.

Mr Garang is a Dinka, the largest of south Sudan's tribes. Specifically, he is a Bor Dinka (see map), the first of the Dinka groups to become Christian and be educated. Their historic missionary post, founded just upriver on the Nile in 1905, was burnt down during Sudan's long civil war between the Arab and Muslim north and the Christian and animist south that ended only five years ago. The cathedral in Bor was also shot up, but still attracts several thousand worshippers.

Mr Garang attributes miracles in the war to the Dinka's strong Christian faith. “We Dinka know the blood of animal sacrifice is very powerful, so the blood of Christ is easy for us to understand.” Will there be another war? Mr Garang shakes his head firmly. “This is a time of work, peace and resettlement.”

In elections last month Omar al-Bashir, a northern Arab, easily retained the presidency of Sudan as a whole, especially since the main northern opposition boycotted the proceedings, while in the south the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebels' political wing, won hands down. The southerners now eagerly await a promised referendum on independence early next year. They are very likely to vote for secession. If allowed to, they will then create Africa's first newly independent country since Eritrea in 1993.

In any event, the new state of South Sudan, whose official name has yet to be finally determined, will be dominated by the Dinka. Their politicians, their spending priorities, even their culture seem set to prevail. At least a quarter of south Sudan's 9m people are Dinka. For two decades the southern rebels' leader was a Dinka, John Garang, a kinsman of the bishop. After his death in a helicopter crash in 2005, he was succeeded by another Dinka, Salva Kiir, who launched his recent election campaign from John Garang's mausoleum. Like the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Dinka are often accused by the region's other 40-plus tribes of tailoring South Sudan's foundation story to suit their own ends.

Bred to love their cattle

The land of the Bor Dinka is vast and fertile but flat. When it rains, water stands in stagnant pools for months. People are stranded in the marshes from May to October with little communication to the outside world. The sorghum harvest depends on good rains. This year they have been late, so the harvest will be poor. Arable farming is unreliable and the Dinka are in any case devoted to cattle, which they still value even above schools and clean water. Children are named after the colour of cows. Marriages are negotiated in cows. Status in rural areas is determined by the number of cows you own. “The dream of a Dinka-dominated country would be everyone running naked in cattle camps,” says a seasoned observer in Juba, the would-be country's fledgling capital.

But other southern tribes are equally devoted to their cattle. The Bor Dinka often fight the Nuer, the region's second tribe, and particularly fear the Murle, a smaller pastoral lot who think nothing of raiding Dinka cattle byres close to Bor. The Dinka often disparage the Nuer as hotter-tempered and the Murle as mad. Dinka elders and some outsiders say the Murle are getting weapons and lorries from the old Arab enemy in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. That claim has not yet been proven. But the northerners have long stirred up rivalry between the Dinka and other southern tribes in order to divide and rule.

Some worry that, deprived of a common enemy in Khartoum, an independent south may descend into inter-ethnic warfare. Last year more than 2,500 people were killed and 400,000 displaced, mostly after cattle raids between the tribes. In 1991 the Nuer massacred Dinka civilians in Bor. Some Dinka say tens of thousands of women and children were killed. South Sudan's vice-president, Riek Machar, a Nuer who was in charge of the attack, says the Dinka exaggerate. Officials in Bor, all of whom are Dinka, say the massacre has been forgiven but not forgotten. Mr Machar reconciled himself with the SPLM's Dinka leadership only in 2002.

Mr Kiir knows Dinka-Nuer rivalry could again turn violent and that, to lessen the risk, he must hand more power to the Nuer and the Equatorians (in the southernmost strip bordering Uganda) in a more federal arrangement. So far he has sought to buy off the malcontents. But resentment has been building up. The army is a shambles. Dinka complain that ill-qualified Nuer are being over-promoted. Non-Dinka hiss that the Dinka have a lock on the most lucrative posts.

If South Sudan is to prosper, the Dinka will not only have to share power but also perform a lot more efficiently themselves. Since the war ended, 2m southerners have returned to their homes. Four times as many children are going to school than before. But the administration in Juba is chaotic. Many millions of dollars of foreign aid have already gone astray. There is barely 50km (30 miles) of tarmac road in the entire region. Crucial contracts have yet to be signed.

Dinka ministers in Juba talk grandly of bringing in tractors and turning virgin land into a breadbasket. But who will drive the tractors or plant the crops? By tradition, Dinka men despise manual labour and few have mechanical skills. Most of the people in Bor who do the real work are Ugandan and Ethiopian. “Work is not our strong point,” admits a Dinka official.